All art is the result of one’s having been in danger of having gone through an experience all the way to the end when no one can go any further. This is what it is like to be an artist — you are unsteady on the edge of life like a swan before an anxious launching of himself on the floods where he is gently caught. Edmund De Waal
About This Quote

In this quote, Franz Kafka talks about how life can be a constant struggle. Many artists have lived through the experiences that Kafka talks about. For example, Elizabeth Gilbert wrote a memoir about her experiences with depression and eating disorders. The tendency of the human mind is to avoid depression and it will do so at any cost.

We may not realize what is going on around us but we can always find a reason for why we are feeling depressed, or why we are doing things that keep us from being happy. Every time you tell yourself that you cannot do something, you are right. While you may be stressed out and feel like you need a vacation, you may still end up taking the vacation because it is the only way to get your mind off of your problems.

Some Similar Quotes
  1. Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something. - Rainbow Rowell
  2. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done. - Vincent Van Gogh
  3. Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep. - Clive Barker
  4. Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you. - Chuck Klosterman
  5. There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. - Vincent Van Gogh
More Quotes By Edmund De Waal
  1. All art is the result of one’s having been in danger of having gone through an experience all the way to the end when no one can go any further. This is what it is like to be an artist — you are unsteady on...
  2. There are things in this world that the children hear, but whose sounds oscillate below an adult's sense of pitch.
  3. There is no straight road to finding yourself, to making something.
  4. With languages, you can move from one social situation to another. With languages, you are at home anywhere.
  5. Even when one is no longer attached to things, it's still something to have been attached to them; because it was always for reasons which other people didn't grasp...' There are the places in memory you do not wish to go with others.
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